Sentinels: Jaguar Night Read online

  Abruptly, the stench eased. The fiery burn beneath his skin eased, fading to an ache. The dusk—true dusk—enfolded him in silence. Dolan didn’t move, not at first—he finished reinforcing his wards, not allowing himself to wonder why the Core had retreated when they—face it—they’d had the complete advantage. The Vigilia adveho hadn’t yet even reached its target; the ward reinforcement hadn’t been finished. His dappled black jaguar fur wouldn’t have kept the invading gnats away forever, and the fire of them had been enough to fragment his concentration. And yet…

  Gone. All of it.

  Dolan slowly raised his head, a growl slipping out. He flexed his claws into the stone hearth—claws sharp enough to tear through duct tape as easily as a knife. He didn’t waste any time tackling the manuscript wrapping, beset with the sudden urgency to see the thing, to touch it directly—to feel it. Beset with the sudden premonition that it—

  That it wasn’t the manuscript at all.

  Dolan growled again—couldn’t stop it, or stop from lashing his tail. Decoy. Paper encased in leather—a fancy journal of some sort, filled with the scripted details of daily life. The Core must have realized it, and they had promptly quit the field.

  He’d been lucky in a backward kind of way—the Core shouldn’t have been able to find him, shouldn’t have been able to reach him…but they had, and only this decoy had saved him from that bafflingly successful attack.

  But it left him with no manuscript and a cold trail.

  And it left him with the need to return to Meghan Lawrence, to see if she could lend insight to his search. It left him with a biting inner self-scorn, knowing he’d underestimated Fabron Gausto and the regional Core.

  A twinge shot through one front leg, involuntarily flexing his claws into the journal’s leather binding; he stared at it without immediate comprehension. A spasm flickered across his ribs; he grunted in surprise, hissing as a contraction twisted his back leg hard enough to kick out across the dirt floor beyond the hearth.

  And then he knew.

  The Atrum Core had left not in retreat, but because they’d already done what they’d come for. Another twist of muscle down his back, a grunt of pain from deep within, tinged with annoyance and—

  —yes, desperation.

  They’d waited for his distraction and they’d somehow infiltrated his defenses, instilling sly dark poisons and now—

  —fire traced down his back—now Meghan would be on her own—a dry jaguar cough, wrenched from a body twisting around itself—and the real manuscript was still out there for the taking—consciousness fading, making way for the fire and—

  Failure. Agonizing death and failure.

  But he still held the threads of the unfinished call, and he redirected it to a closer target, to the one he least wanted to endanger and most wanted to help.

  Meghan. Sentinel unblooded. Daughter of the trickster.

  Hope of the Vigilia.

  And the one face he wanted to see.

  Meghan stiffened. Echoes of pain shot through her body, trying to twist her—trying to take over. Without thinking, she whirled to face the eastern horizon, which was darkened by dusk…but no longer by the strange haze of the past few days, the one she’d first thought was an atmospheric oddity and then smoke from a distant fire and then pretended not to notice at all.

  “Meghan!” Jenny ran down the aisle of the opensided barn to reach her, hands closing over her upper arms to turn her, to look her in the eye. “Meghan—?”

  Meghan had to blink a few times before she truly saw her friend—before she realized she’d dropped an entire bucket of oats and psyllium, leaving the hungry gelding in the end stall pawing in frustration. “I have to go,” she said, and the words sounded as if they came from someone else’s mouth.

  “You—” Jenny dropped her arms, took a step back. “You what?”

  “Have to go.” Meghan spoke more briskly, her mind racing ahead—choosing a horse, listing supplies…preparing.

  She’d felt the pain. She knew who it was, if not why. She knew he was alone on her land.

  She knew she had to go…

  If not why.

  Chapter 3

  Meghan ignored Jenny’s hovering presence as she grabbed saddle, bridle and the saddlebags set aside for trail emergencies. A quick side trip to the house and her bedroom, and a low storage bin bumped out from beneath her bed and across the braided rug to yield her mother’s lore box with its precious herbs and powders.

  Meghan dashed back to the barn, nearly colliding with Jenny at the threshold. Jenny did a double take, her gaze settling on the box tucked under Meghan’s arm. Wooden, carved with loving but basic skills by an adolescent Margery Lawrence…the most meaningful thing Meghan had left of her mother.

  “I’m okay,” Meghan said, knowing how very much circumstances indicated otherwise. “But my mother…she may have left something undone. And I have a feeling—” She broke off. How she hated that phrase; how she usually avoided it. How she’d been teased as a girl in school—

  But this was Jenny, and her face cleared. Or nearly cleared. “All right,” she said. “But is it safe?”

  Meghan hesitated long enough to shrug. Safe? Not in the least. That somehow didn’t, at the moment, seem relevant. “Grab Luka for me?” she asked Jenny, and pulled a floppy camp bag from the small tack room opposite the saddles.

  “Luka,” Jenny echoed. “You’re going into rough country?” But her feet were already moving for the gelding’s stall.

  Because Luka would get her there. Wise, once mistreated into a man-killer, the aging gelding had finally found a rider who understood his mighty Lipizzan spirit. He still suffered no fool gladly, but he’d given his heart to Meghan—and now his sure feet and still-powerful body would take her anywhere.

  A mount she might well need, since she had no idea just where she’d end up. She only knew she’d follow—

  Wrenching pain, fracturing thoughts…

  And a sudden brief clarity, a presence so clear that it arrowed right through her. Danger, it said, and Atrum Core and ’Ware, Meghan Lawrence and then more faintly, an entirely different tone behind it, something yearning, Meghan…

  Meghan blinked. She scrambled to her feet, having found herself on her knees in the aisle—and just in time, for here came Jenny with Luka, and in what possible way could she explain her reaction, explain why she still had to go?

  Still reeling from the touch of him—the dark presence, the faint, sharp spice, the hint of something deep, untapped—she wondered quite suddenly if the jaguar had touched her mother like this. If he’d warned her.

  If she’d gone anyway, as Meghan intended to do.

  “You’re sure?” Jenny asked, dropping Luka’s lead rope beside the gear; it was as good as tying him. But she didn’t wait for an answer; she said, “Let me grab you a couple of jackets, then.” Because the temperature would drop fast on a crystal-clear night like this one; already Meghan’s sweatshirt didn’t seem quite enough to keep the goose bumps away.

  Or maybe that was the lingering touch of his presence in her soul.

  She shut him out as best she could, just so she could think. She quickly saddled Luka, stroking his noble baroque nose when he turned to inquire of her hurry, but swiftly turning to tighten the girth on the lightweight synthetic Aussie saddle, adding a breastplate, strapping the bulging saddlebags in place…and turning to find Jenny proffering not only an armful of easily layered jackets, but pommel bags stuffed with trail food. She gave Meghan a quirky little smile and said, “I had a feeling.”

  Meghan gave her a quick hug while Jenny still had her hands full, and then pulled on a Windbreaker and vest and strapped the remaining two jackets over the sleeping bag. “That’s why I choose my family.”

  “Oh, pshaw,” Jenny said airily, but her eyes had a glint in the sallow mercury light of the barn aisle. She double-checked the straps and girth as Meghan slipped a practical trail halter bridle over a head almost too dignified to carry so much
. Luka chomped the bit and waited patiently, nothing like the mount he’d be once Meghan swung her leg over the saddle.

  “I’ve got my cell phone,” Meghan said, though she knew she wouldn’t use it even if she managed a rare connection. There was no way she’d lure her unsuspecting chosen family into the thick of this mess. They knew of her feelings, of her connections…in truth, there was a little of it in all of them, that common thread that drew them here. But they had no idea her long-dead mother had shifted to a coyote any time or place that pleased her. They had no idea such organizations as the Sentinels and the Atrum Core even existed.

  And if Meghan had anything to say about it, they never would.

  Once mounted, Luka transformed—no longer a stocky, aging gray-to-white gelding, but a creature of movement and air, dancing his way out of the ranch yard and heading toward familiar trails. Meghan allowed him to pick up a power trot, propelling them along the steady incline of a trail. He stretched into the generous rein she offered, arching his neck like a young stallion, and took them up into the darkness.

  As the trail turned twisty and tricky, Meghan gave him his head and turned inward, bracing herself, and cautiously opened the connection she’d shuttered away. Sensations flooded in, swamping her. She reeled in the saddle, dimly aware that Luka deftly shifted beneath her, balancing her again. Black fur and clawed dirt and burning lungs and the fiery agony of spasming muscles and again, that briefest instant of awareness—this time with a hint of puzzlement, as though he perceived her approach. Meghan?

  She might have answered, had that awareness not shattered into a stuttering fugue of pained disorientation. She clutched Luka’s thick white mane, struggling to control the connection, to keep from drowning in the intensity of those shared impressions.

  Nothing had prepared her for this…not her mother, not her mother’s death. Not her guardian aunt’s uninterest in the shape-shifter skills that touched their lives. Not even this man’s sudden presence in her life two days earlier.

  Jaguar.

  I’m supposed to hate you.

  Maybe she did. Maybe that’s what had created the strength of the thread between them. The clarity. And even the tears running unchecked down her face as she absorbed the smallest fraction of his experience.

  Beware, Meghan…

  “I’m coming,” she told him, out loud into the night. His protest beat against her—but only for a moment before pain swept him away. Setting her own jaw, she shifted to follow the sensations; Luka willingly took the next chance to turn uphill, scrabbling between a batch of tightly bunched oaks, his big unshod feet biting into the scrabble-rock hillside. She balanced lightly over his withers, giving him freedom to move. Soon enough they’d reach the high ponderosa pines, leaving Luka more space—at least until they hit the canyon that divided her land from Coronado National Forest.

  But as they reached the pines, as the feel of the Sentinel began to fade—weakening—she found herself turning directly toward that canyon, leveling off their progress. Luka moved out strongly beneath her, as if he knew where he was going—and suddenly, so did Meghan.

  The old homestead.

  The first homestead took advantage of the canyon stream, the one funneling cold snowmelt down the side of the hill; it was tucked into the small natural clearing beside the stream, using a backdrop of pines and oak and the occasional creosote bush, with cedars creeping up the side of the hill. But even so, it was now only a wreck of disintegrating structures, barely enough for emergency shelter in the case of a sudden storm.

  His thought, surfacing randomly against hers before sliding away again. I thought it was here. I thought…

  Meghan stiffened in the saddle, causing Luka to hesitate for the very first time. It. Her mother had been dealing with an it—one she never would identify, not even in the most generic terms. An it that had killed her—if not directly, because of the Atrum Core’s obsession with the thing.

  Meghan had thought it destroyed. She’d thought it gone. And yet the jaguar had come back to hunt it?

  For the first time, she truly hesitated. Luka, not quite willing to stop his energetic process, nonetheless scaled back to a cadenced, high-kneed trot. The trail unfurled before them in the light of the rising moon—coming on full, it was enough to light their way in these well-spaced pines. Enough, if she let him, for Luka to flow forward into a collected canter, perfectly balanced to avoid ruts and suddenly jutting rocks alike.

  Sudden regret found her on a breeze. His regret—and yearning and need and a deep, bitter underlayer of…

  Failure. Loneliness.

  Meghan settled deep in the saddle, giving Luka the faintest lift of thigh and seat bone to release him into the canter.

  I know where you are. And I’m still coming.

  Failure. He’d come to put an end to this once and for all…to secure the indestructible manuscript where it would never be found. He’d come to involve the daughter, as his brother had involved the mother. But he’d meant to keep her safe…not writhe out his life on the dirt floor of an ancient home while the daughter was left to take the heat.

  Like his brother.

  Jaguar fur, scattered over the towering desert landscape. Gold and black rosettes, a claw…a whisker. No more. Because the brevis regional consul had delayed backup with scrying and warding and—

  Whatever. Too late.

  They’d be too late for Meghan, too.

  Your brother? The thought had a light touch, gentle…and unfamiliar.

  Hearthstone bruised shoulder and spine as his body jerked uncontrollably against it, twisting so tightly he couldn’t find room to breathe. The world dimmed even further, and still he recoiled inwardly in the alarm of no longer being alone. His lips drew back in a snarl and his whiskers quivered, and even blinded by pain and his body’s jerking dance, his slapping paw found its target, claws clogged with dirt and blood but still able to pierce skin.

  He hadn’t expected to feel the pain of it, sharp and wounding; he froze. Only for an instant, and then the poisons took him away, the world fading away to thin nothingness. He barely felt the light touch on his head, around his muzzle—confident fingers lifting that frozen snarl and smearing his gums with a paste imbued with the feather-touch of incantations.

  As fast as that, the rigor eased, his long and powerful body sagging back to dirt and hearthstone. And when the world darkened, it was as if he fell into himself, deeply into himself…back into the life of his beating heart and panting lungs and even that deep growl of feeble protest stuck in his throat.

  And then, somewhere along the way, he fell into her. Meghan. Slip-sliding from one thought to another, from his to hers and back again. Through it all echoed his anguished backdrop of warning—Atrum Core…Atrum Core…’ ware. Meghan, Atrum Core…

  They’d come back if they knew she was here. They’d come back if they thought she’d become involved…if they thought she’d shed her noncombatant’s role to join the Sentinels outright.

  If they thought, as he’d thought, that she could help to find the Liber Nex.

  ’Ware, Meghan…

  And then he lost himself to darkness, to sweet scents and blessed lassitude and the enfolding blanket of determination that he would not, after all, lose himself to the Core.

  And Meghan followed him down to the darkness.

  You shouldn’t go…don’t go—! Sweet little girl voice, gone reedy and thin with desperation, the recognition of futility.

  The world skipped around memory turned into reality. Long coltish legs crossed on the bed, covers over her head…herbs pungent in their pinched little piles, arrayed directly on the sheets around her bare legs. Breathe deep. Take them in, like Mama says. Transform them. Empower them. They didn’t quite have meaning, those words, but by God she tried. She built wards and she built warnings and she built safety.

  Or she thought she did.

  But she felt it happen. She felt the death…the loss. Mama! Don’t go, Mama! Don’t—

  A w
hisper of goodbye, a scant caress of love—

  You said there’d be help! You said there’d be a jaguar! You said—

  Gone.

  Scattered herbs, sheets damp from sobbing, heart broken forever. Little girl betrayed. By the—

  Jaguar.

  Older brother. Strong, golden, black rosettes rippling with the movement of bone and muscle beneath. Jared, who could do anything. Jared, confident in running point for the Sentinels, in assessing a situation, in doing what had to be done until the entire team arrived. Jared, steeped deep in Sentinel lore, Sentinel responsibility…utter faith in teammates.

  Jared. Brother, father and mother in one package, enough years between them to make it work. Enough years before them to anticipate working together. Sentinels.

  “Sure, it’s dangerous—it’s the damned Liber Nex, Dolan. But I won’t be alone. Working point, yeah, but the team will be there. Making sure we’re clear without drawing attention our way.”

  Jared.

  Not coming back.

  What do you mean, he didn’t make it? What do you mean, you weren’t there in time? What do you mean, he’s—

  Dead.

  No jaguar. No Sentinels. Just Margery Lawrence, left on her own and now—

  Dead.

  Echoing wails, bitter, bitter grief, wrenching loneliness…resentment.

  And childhood resolve, not quite as young and untouched as it had been only days earlier. I’ll rebuild my own family. My chosen family.

  And the Sentinels will have nothing of me. Not—

  —ever.

  They’d let him die. The Sentinels had tangled themselves in some dumb-ass protocol and they’d delayed and they’d left him out there to die.

  Jared. His last thoughts had been for that woman, a single mother, a joyful coyote with no real place in fieldwork, no training, just heart. His last thoughts—